Ghost faces eviction – by the council.
Fear of a ghost split up the Maxted family… Mum and Dad each went off with two of their four children to stay with different relatives. “We could stand no more,” Mr Sidney Maxted, a salesman, said yesterday. “Pillows were switched from bed to bed. Lights were turned off – it was driving us mad.” But the ghost may soon get notice to quit its haunt at Waterdales, Northfleet, Kent – the local council may consider having it exorcised. And the Maxteds are to be rehoused.
Daily Mirror, 27th February 1965.
Family flee from Council House Ghost.
A family have been driven out of their council “semi” – by the ghost of a little girl. There was just no living with the ghost for 25-year-old engineer Eric Essex, his wife Margaret, 22 and their two sons. Locked doors would open mysteriously. Lights would switch on and off for no apparent reason. And there were eerie noises in the night. Then the “ghost” appeared. And the family fled in terror – the second family to run from the house in Waterdales, Northfleet, Kent, in two years.
“And we are not going back,” said Mr Essex yesterday. He went on: “I was awakened last Saturday around 1 a.m. by a whistling sound. Standing near my pillow was the glowing shape of a girl, with a sash around her waist. The whole bed was jumping and I was frozen stiff.”
Eric woke his family and they ran across the road to move in with his mother, Mrs Elsie Essex.
In February last year Mr Sidney Maxted, 28, and his wife Joyce were driven out of the “haunted” house.
Daily Mirror, 24th August 1966.
Family fear to return to ‘haunted’ house at Northfleet.
By Bill Garland.
For the second time in two years, a family has been driven by fear from Northfleet’s ‘haunted’ house. The front bedroom of 16, Waterdales, a 32-year-old semi-detached council house, was the scene of a terrifying experience on Sunday for Mr Eric Essex and his family. Twenty-eight-year-old Mr Essex, a tug engineer, claims that at about 1 a.m. on Sunday he was awoken by a high-pitched warbling sound in his bedroom. “I didn’t believe it for a moment,” said Mr Essex. “There was the orange coloured shape of a headless woman standing beside my arm shaking the bed. The ghost seemed to drift towards the bedroom door, but disappeared before it reached there.”
Mr Essex’s wife, Margaret (22) awoke just after the ghost had disappeared. They grabbed their sons, Stephen (2) and seven-month-old John who were sleeping in the adjoining bedroom, and moved out of the house immediately. The family went to Mr Essex’s parents’ house at 45, Waterdales. Mr Essex said: “I’m never going back to live in that house again. There is no doubt in my mind that it is haunted. The ghost touched my arm and all day Sunday my arm felt icy cold. I have never seen anything like it before, but there have been cases of strange noises in th ehouse. During the last four or five days there was an almost unbearable smell in the hall.”
Strange noises at the house have also been heard by Mr Essex’s 13-year-old niece, Miss Elaine Haynes, 226, Waterdales, who said: “I have heard noises that sound like heavy footsteps on bare boards.”
The occupier of 14, Waterdales, Mrs Margaret Harrison, also claimed to have heard noises sounding like heavy footsteps coming from next door at times when she knew that everybody there was in bed. She told me: “My husband is often away from home on contract work and I am not staying next to that house with just my three children.” Mrs Harrison claimed that since she moved into 14, Waterdales in June of this year, her children Sharon (5), Peter (3) and Lee (1) have never been really settled and have not been able to sleep well.
The former occupant of 14, Waterdales, Mr Alan Alice, 26, Huntley Avenue, Northfleet, commented: “We lived next to 16, Waterdales for 15 months and were never bothered by strange noises.”
Mrs Diane Alice did, however, admit that she was very frightened when awoken at 3 o’clock one morning by what sounded like footsteps from next door. “We were warned that the ceilings put in the roofs of the houses when they were rebuilt following bombing in the second World War would exaggerate any sound and therefore we decided the noise must have come from birds in the roof next door.”
The previous occupier of 16, Waterdales, Mr Sydney Maxted, now living at 6, Hartshill Road, Northfleet, declined to comment on the matter. In February 1965 Mr Maxted and his family claimed that they were being haunted by a poltergeist and refused to stay in the house.
Mr Essex said: “When I heard Mr Maxted’s claim I thought it was a huge joke, but now I have changed my mind. I believe 16, Waterdales is haunted.”
Mr C.M. Lewis, Northfleeet Council’s housing manager, said: “The matter is now in the hands of the chairman of the Housing Committee (Cllr. W.H.W. Smith) who will decide the future of the house.”
Note: It is known that during the last war a man was hit by flying shrapnel and died on the doorstep of 16, Waterdales.
Mr Eric Essex standing by the bed on the spot where he claims to have seen a headless woman.
Kent Messenger and Gravesend Telegraph, 26th August 1966.
One haunting evening.
By Richard Sears.
Dusk had fallen along Waterdales, the street of the haunted Council house, in Northfleet, Kent. Dogs had taken their bottoms off cold pavements. Cars leaned glassy-eyed in the gutters. There was the hush that children leave behind when they are taken indoors.
Walking beside me was a tough young tug engineer in jeans and white shirt. A man built like a ship’s bulkhead, his thick, sunburned forearms tattooed with skulls. He had honest blue eyes. Frightened eyes.
Eric Essex, 25, was going back to the house he fled from with his wife and two young children in the small hours of last Sunday morning. The second family to flee in two years. And Eric Essex swears he will never live in it again. “We were there eighteen months,” he said, “with noises of dragging feet, mysterious bangings, locked doors found open… Last Saturday was the end. Just after midnight I woke up in the back bedroom. There was a high pitched whistling noise. I was frozen, and the bed was shaking up and down. Then, beside the bed, I saw a woman in an orange-pinky dress with a sash. She was headless. It seemed hours before I fell out of bed, knocked the lamp over and woke my wife. The woman vanished.”
We stop in front of the neat semi-detached house of which he is tenant. It is 8.40 p.m. Eric opens the front door and switches the light on. It is a clean, gaily-painted hall. A child’s doll lies sprawled in the corner. We stand listening. Eric, cameraman Tom King and I. Nothing.
8.42: We file upstairs to the bedroom where the woman appeared, neat double bed, covers turned down. Eric points to a bedside chair: “She stood there,” he says. We listen. A high pitched wail sounds from somewhere. “Damn kids,” says Eric. He rushes downstairs. “Turn the light off” I say to Tom. I lie down on the bed in the dark. Listening. “My ears hurt,” I say. “So do mine,” says Tom. The ear pressure gets worse. “It’s like being in a plane when it’s losing height,” I say.
8.50: We move into the next bedroom. A child’s room. Ear pressure just as bad here.
8.55: Downstairs in the pretty lounge under the “noisy” room. I check with Tom. The ear pressure has lessened.
Ten p.m. We leave and in the street the pressure goes off. Big Eric droops. “Nobody will believe me now.” Tom puts a key in the boot-lock of the car. It flashes. He gets a shock. “First time that’s happened,” he mutters.
Next morning my phone rang. It was Eric’s next door neighbour, Mrs Margaret Harrison, 25. “I’m leaving too,” she said. “I woke in the night and heard a terrible thumping, I can’t describe it. I told my husband I shan’t sleep next door to that house tonight.” I said: “I don’t blame you. Good luck.”
Daily Mirror, 26th August 1966.
K.M. reporters’ night watch in Northfleet’s ‘haunted house’.
Unexpected sounds were heard when two 20-year-old Kent Messenger reporters, Dick Moore and Bill Garland, with Mr Malcolm Bennett (22), a financial accounts clerk, of 214 Springhead Road, Northfleet, spent a night in Northfleet’s “haunted” house at 16, Waterdales, from which two families have been driven by fear. “With a torch, sandwiches, cigarettes and a flask of coffee, we entered the house at 11 p.m.,” writes Bill Garland.
“We noted that the occupier of the adjoining property, Mrs Margaret Harrison, has taken her children to stay with relatives because her husband was working in Scotland. She refuses to stay in her house alone. On entering the hall, I noticed a heavy, musty smell usually associated with properties that have been vacant for several months, not just a few days as in the case of 16, Waterdales. Outside the full moon shone down on the windy, rain-swept street as we climbed the stairs and prepared to carry out our vigil in the bedroom from which two couples had fled in terror.
“At about 12.30 a.m., the room suddenly became icy cold and immediately after this, a test with cigarette smoke showed that despite the bedroom door and windows being tightly shut, a draught appeared to exist in the area where Mr Essex claims to have seen the ‘ghost.’ The unnerving aspect of this was that, after about a minute, the draught disappeared. During the next hour, we heard noises like rustling and something sliding along the floors. When Dick Moore went to investigate one of the sounds, the clear sound of creaking boards came from the lower part of the flight of stairs. By this time I was feeling scared.
“After about 1.30 a.m. no further sounds were heard. We all noticed that there seemed to be some sort of pressure on our eardrums and although our faces felt very hot, our hands and feet were freezing cold. When dawn broke and our vigil was over, we had a feeling of relief. We agreed that we would not stay in the house alone.”
Dick Moore writes: “Although we did not see anything during our night long vigil, from the moment we entered the house I had the feeling we were not entirely alone.”
Dick Moore and Bill Garland at the start of their vigil in Northfleet’s “haunted” house.
Kent Messenger and Gravesend Telegraph, 2nd September 1966.
‘Haunted’ house interests the BBC.
Northfleet’s haunted house is to gain even more national fame – this time on television. BBC-2 producer Mr Bob Saunders wants to include the house, 16 Waterdales, in a programme. “Can we explain the poltergeists?” will be one of a series of programmes called “More Things,” as present being recorded by the BBC travel and exploration department for future transmission.
Kent Messenger and Gravesend Telegraph, 23rd September 1966.
The case of the haunted council house.
On the spot investigation no.2 by Dr George Owen.
Few people who know the history of No. 16, The Waterdales, a semi-detached council house in Northfleet, Kent, can pass it without a shiver up the spine. Two families in the last two years have been driven out of there by ghosts, one headless. The first family, Sidney and Joyce Maxted and their four children, fled because their lives were made intolerable by “things.”
A poltergeist (moving spirit) invaded their 37s 6d. -a-week rented home, and, says Mr Maxted: “It made scratching noises under the bed, twitched bedcovers, and prodded the children when they tried to sleep. It hid small ornaments, spun the hands of the clock, tramped heavily across the floor, and moved pillows around the room.” These irritations were followed bythe appearance of the ghost of a little girl which grew in height as it advanced towards them. The Maxteds fled, and have since been rehoused.
The second family, tugboat engineer Eric Essex and his wife, Margaret, were so keen to have a house of their own that they decided to move in with their two sons. “We pooh-poohed the idea of a haunted house,” Mrs Essex told me, “but we were soon to realise our mistake. Doors opened mysteriously after they had been locked; lights would switch on and off and eerie noises and footsteps were heard at night.”
Mr Essex says: “The last straw came when the luminous pinkish-orange ghost of a headless woman stood by the bed. The whole bed was jumping, and I was frozen stiff. Nothing would ever induce me to go back there to live…”
At 10 p.m. one recent evening, Dr Owen turned the key in the door of No. 16 and prepared for an all-night vigil. Before he did so, he made a number of significant inquiries about the origin of the house, and previous occupants. The house was built in the thirties. In a wartime air raid a local resident was killed by shrapnel while sheltering in the doorway. A few years later a boy living in the house died in a street accident. Dr Owen toured the neat, cosy little house, which was tastefully furnished, just as it was left when the last family abandoned it.
He tested the floorboards for “give,” tapped the walls, and examined every crevice for anything to suggest earth movements. Dr Owen said: “I thought I might have found a possible answer to some of the unexplained noises when I saw that a bedroom in the adjoining house, No. 14, jutted out over the hall of No. 16.” He called next door and asked Mrs Margaret Harrison whether sounds from her floorboards might have been those heard below.
Dramatically, the truth was quite the reverse. She had heard the sound of doors slamming repeatedly when there was no one at home in No. 16. And since both families have gone away peculiar thudding sounds have come from inside.
Around midnight, Dr Owen settled down in an armchair with a flask of coffee and sandwiches. By his side was sound recording equipment to pick up noises of the influence at work, and high-speed flashlight cameras. “One thing that interested me,” said Dr Owen,” was that both families had noticed, just before odd things began to happen, a strange odour of unknown origin. The smell, whichhas been described variously as petrol or gas, mixed with an evil mustiness, would disappear as suddenly as it came. but I found no trace of it.”
Last February Mr Maxted was awakened by his wife who was calling out “Jane!” (the name of their daughter). Mrs Maxted was sitting up, her face frozen ina mask of fear. She screamed and then collapsed. Her husband gave Dr Owen this account of what she saw: “The figure of a little fair-haired girl of about six came into the room. It advanced towards my wife and, as it came nearer it grew in height until it became a tall figure bending over her. Slowly it arched away hiding its face.”
Last August, Mr Eric Essex had another remarkable encounter. “At 2 a.m.,” he recalled, “I was awakened by a low-pitched, almost sub-sonic whistling and felt the bed being heaved up at one end.” Turning his head he saw the form of a woman in a long flowing dress but with no head. It was luminous, pinkish-orange transparent at the edge of the glow, but more substantial in appearance at the centre.
As the night wore on Dr Owen considered the possibility that the ghosts – although seen in different shapes or guises – may well have been the same one. “It is possible,” he told me later, “that when one sees a ghost it could grow from a child into a woman in an instant.” Dr Owen stayed awake all night, listening, watching, waiting for any witness evidence, but none was forthcoming.
Conclusion – Dr Owen’s findings in the case of the haunted council house.
If I could spare the time, I would stay in No. 16 one night a week for the next year. That’s how convinced I am that this house holds the key to a great deal that is not yet understood about the supernormal. True, I drew a blank on that one night, but the absence of activity may be due to a number of things unknown to us. There may have been some interplay between the temperaments of the two families (when they were in residence) and whatever it is that haunts the house.
On the other hand, even when the house is empty there are unusual disturbances, as reported by the lady next door. I formed an excellent impression of all the people I interviewed and regard them as witnesses of truth. There was no motive for deception, because both families were clearly devoted to their home and had worked hard to decorate it in the nicest way.
Is No. 16 haunted – or not? I think there is no reasonable doubt that for more than two years No. 16 has been the scene for physical manifestations of the type usually encountered in poltergeist cases. There are, however, important differences between this haunting and the standard cases. In the latter type of outbreak the physical phenomena are attached to a person. This poltergeist seems to have attached itself to th ehouse.
There is also no doubt that a very strong force dominates the house. Whether future occupants will experience it remains to be seen. Everything indicates that the house is “haunted” by a female apparition, but the clue as to why it infests No. 16 may be tucked away in history. There is no evidence connecting the haunted ones with any known dead person.
Sunday Mirror, 20th November 1966.
Haunted house ‘to let’.
The “haunted house” at 16, Waterdales, Northfleet, remains unoccupied, despite numerous applications from hopeful would-be tenants. Two families have left the house, declaring they would never live there again after the ghost had brought fear into their lives. The last occasion the house was occupied was on Sunday August 21, last year, when the tenant , Mr Eric Essex said he was awakened by the ghost of a headless woman beckoning him from his bed. The whole family left the house immediately, and have never returned. They now live further along Waterdales with the parents of Mr Essex. Mr Essex only returns to No. 16 to collect his mail.
The future of the house remains unsettled. “We have received numerous applications to rent the property,” said Mr M.C. Lewis, housing manager of Northfleet Council, “but they have all come from people well outside our district, who are only interested in it because of its reputation. We are aware that Mr Essex and his family are not at present living there, and we are trying to arrange for a similar house to be offered to him. At present Mr Essex is still paying rent on the house, but we should have reached some decision concerning its future within the next few weeks.”
Kent Messenger and Gravesend Telegraph, 13th January 1967.